Unitree sold 5,500+ humanoids in 2025 as robotics hardware takes off
chris_j_paxton · x · 2026-08-25
Robotics researcher Chris Paxton argues that the comic failures at the World Humanoid Games in Beijing — robots crashing into walls, soccer robots piling up — actually signal a mature ecosystem that builds and breaks robots at scale. Compared to a year ago, robots are faster, smarter, and notably more flammable, with several sprinters catching fire from heat.
On production: Unitree sold over 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025 (mostly G1s), with demand staying strong after its IPO; its edge is relentless shipping and brutal field testing. Agibot and others are scaling too, and he expects easily tens of thousands of humanoids to be built this year. He also cites the sprint-optimized Honor Lightning beating Usain Bolt's human 100m record.
Related event: World Humanoid Games Signal Takeoff of Humanoid Robot Hardware Ecosystem(5 posts)→
More from Embodied
- Niantic Spatial's places library ships robot-ready Gaussian splat warehouse scenes for policy training — RexDouglass · 2026-10-16
- Volvo and NVIDIA expand partnership to bring safe automated driving to next-gen cars — nvidia · 2026-10-16
- Tevel's robotic system harvests fruit around the clock using computer vision — LexiLove · 2026-10-16
- SHOES: 10 minutes of real-robot RL lets quadrupeds walk in shoes, CoRL 2026 paper — kscottz · 2026-10-16
- Tesla Cybercab robotaxis logged zero crashes in first two weeks of public rides, NHTSA data shows — elonmusk · 2026-10-16
- Robotics LLMs tested on 16 tasks: GPT-6 Astra hits 17.2% success vs Fable's 9.1% — pabbeel · 2026-10-16